New Spell Idea (Fusing monsters together)

[Mythrignoc]

So right now I'm wanting to create a new spell. I've always wondered how a paraelemental came into existence, and I've been curious about the symbiotic and tauric creature templates.


So, basically the spell idea I have is a horrid fusion spell, similar to the psions but more of a polymorph that is cast on creatures. I'd have three types, Lesser, regular, and Greater for 5th, 7th and 9th level spells respectively. But to be perfectly honest, I'd have no clue how to go about it and what limitations to set on a spell like this for the lesser and regular version, compared to the greater.

Two things that I would want the spell to have. A gestalt effect, the obvious one (basically where both sets of stats are combined together in a powerful but not broken manner, as this will likely be a 1 round a level spell), and two a horrid effect that doesn't just make the two simply fused and that's that, but rather turns them into an aberration type with some new abilities and attacks because of the mutagenic nature of the spell.

The first spell, Lesser, could likely be left as just the gestalt effect alone, having their abilities just take the highest number and get rid of the lower ones (like for two fortitude saves, one +7 and one +9, the +9 becomes the new save, etc).

The regular Horrid Fusion would turn them into an aberration, not only fusing their bodies together but modifying where the limbs might go, granting extra abilities (akin to Astral Construct columns). Maybe an extra attack, maybe resistances, maybe bonus hit points, maybe just a pure bonus to strength and dexterity or something, who knows. I think it might be best to keep the new mutation bonuses/effects small, and allow for 1 mutation per four or five levels or something, (thus at 7th level casting, 13th level minimum, you could use two mutations, and then later at 15th and 20th level 3 and 4 mutations) or something like that.

Finally the Greater horrid could not only improve the regular horrid fusion mutation abilities (or number of), but could also add in an option of increasing the casting time to make the spell permanent.


This is definitely an Evil spell, and a Transmutaiton (polymorph) spell, but I think a divine counterpart could exist, call it a Horrid Chimera and give it fiendish/celestial abilities instead of abberation ones.

I dunno, anyone think this is a feasible idea, or does it already sound way too broken? This is primarily an NPC spell for creating wicked enemies but a player character could use it too, for summonings or planar bindings, or even companions/familiars (while druids would probably never do this, there are prestige classes in various books and supplemental core sets like Diabolist that give you an evil companion that functions like an animal companion, or Fleshwarper who is already mutating his familiar as it is ).


Anyways, I can generally form up a spell with a small table and a description, I'm just needing help on rule balancing and such.

[Bauglir]

I would suggest either having a set list of creatures to create that need a given amount of power in the flesh (as measured by the sum of the creatures' CRs) or a spell which consumes a given amount of power in the flesh (as measured by a single creature's CR) to buff an existing creature in pre-defined ways, probably not by granting any hugely interesting abilities. Just about any other option is likely to result in broken combinations of things that you couldn't possibly foresee.

EDIT: Obvious examples: anything with natural spellcasting + high-HD creature with Dual Actions. Anything with a powerful ability + a Choker. Anything powerful in any way with an Elder Black Pudding. Oh gods, Sarrukhs...

[PhaedrusXY]

Or make it an Epic spell. They threw balance out the window with that system from the get go. 

[Bauglir]

Or make it an Epic spell. They threw balance out the window with that system from the get go. 

Aye, that'd do. Origin of Species can do anything this can, but worse.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

EDIT: Obvious examples: anything with natural spellcasting + high-HD creature with Dual Actions. Anything with a powerful ability + a Choker.

No other creatures can assume the form of a sharn (or anything approximating it) by means of an alternate form ability, polymorph, or other spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities.

Unintentional balance for the win!

[PhaedrusXY]

EDIT: Obvious examples: anything with natural spellcasting + high-HD creature with Dual Actions. Anything with a powerful ability + a Choker.

No other creatures can assume the form of a sharn (or anything approximating it) by means of an alternate form ability, polymorph, or other spells, spell-like abilities, or supernatural abilities.

Unintentional balance for the win!

I doubt it was unintentional. Even the (otherwise notoriously clueless) authors realized that cheese was too smelly to allow someone to snag it via Polymorph/Shapechange/etc.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I mean you can't fuse a choker and a powerful natural spellcaster because that would be approximating a sharn.

[PhaedrusXY]

I mean you can't fuse a choker and a powerful natural spellcaster because that would be approximating a sharn.

Eh, that's quite debatable. They could have been talking about what a sharn looks like, not how it functions. They said Form, not Function, after all.

[Mythrignoc]

Well...obviously there's no real way to balance this due to the way min-maxing works. I could easily find some amazingly tough CR 10 brute and amazingly intelligent CR 10 spell like ability user, fuse them together, and have something godlike.

The same could be said for the original Polymorph or Shapechange spell, as the only useful monster to turn into from the core 3.5 book is the Hydra, and that is a seriously broken polymorph. I mean, the fact that Hydra's don't need multi-attack to use all X number of heads they have means you can do that as well, and you may not get their regeneration ability but you turn into a 15 headed hydra at 15th level polymorph, it's -sick- what you can do.

Given the right set of rules though I think this spell can be balanced too, barring unforeseen examples like the one above (except for the hydra, Polymorph really is fairly balanced all things considered). I dunno, I just thought it'd be a cool idea for a game with the main villain being an expert in Chimera making (not the stupid "snake, eagle, lion, dragon" chimera that holds the stereotype, but a full blown splicer of monsters).

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I mean you can't fuse a choker and a powerful natural spellcaster because that would be approximating a sharn.

Eh, that's quite debatable. They could have been talking about what a sharn looks like, not how it functions. They said Form, not Function, after all.

Nobody understands their beaucracy! 

You cannot grasp the true forms of sharns' tax!

[PhaedrusXY]

Well...obviously there's no real way to balance this due to the way min-maxing works. I could easily find some amazingly tough CR 10 brute and amazingly intelligent CR 10 spell like ability user, fuse them together, and have something godlike.

The same could be said for the original Polymorph or Shapechange spell, as the only useful monster to turn into from the core 3.5 book is the Hydra, and that is a seriously broken polymorph. I mean, the fact that Hydra's don't need multi-attack to use all X number of heads they have means you can do that as well, and you may not get their regeneration ability but you turn into a 15 headed hydra at 15th level polymorph, it's -sick- what you can do.

Given the right set of rules though I think this spell can be balanced too, barring unforeseen examples like the one above (except for the hydra, Polymorph really is fairly balanced all things considered). I dunno, I just thought it'd be a cool idea for a game with the main villain being an expert in Chimera making (not the stupid "snake, eagle, lion, dragon" chimera that holds the stereotype, but a full blown splicer of monsters).

Origin of Species can create an entirely new species. With a little tweaking, you could make an Epic spell to do what you want, or just use that one, and reflavor it.

Either way, this sounds like it should be an Epic spell to me.

[Mythrignoc]

Erm...when I compared it to polymorph and shapechange, I did that to prove it didn't need to be an epic spell.


Another comparison is the Fusion spell from psionics, which is also not epic and works exactly the way I'm thinking of for the gestalt features, and it's not even 9th level.

[Bauglir]

Erm...when I compared it to polymorph and shapechange, I did that to prove it didn't need to be an epic spell.


Another comparison is the Fusion spell from psionics, which is also not epic and works exactly the way I'm thinking of for the gestalt features, and it's not even 9th level.

Both are well known for being ridiculously broken, for exactly the reasons listed above; any sort of casual optimization will quickly spot ridiculous combinations that were never intended by the authors of the things being combined. The polymorph line, alone, qualifies Transmutation as being one of the most powerful schools (plus it has other goodies), and Fusion is just plain borked (I'm being perfectly serious when I say I've never seen it used outside of some obnoxiously broken build such as Azrael or some of LoP's optimization series stuff; it's just too complicated for most people to use much, and the people it's not too complicated for recognize its gamebreaking potential, by and large). Using two of the most broken mechanics in D&D, right up there with Genesis, Time Stop, Celerity, and Craft Contingent Spell, as a balance point doesn't really bode well for how well this sort of thing would work out.

All that said, if you don't want it to be epic, you can still do it, but I STRONGLY recommend only allowing access to a predetermined list of abilities, and NOT allowing freeform combination of abilities from other creatures. You could do a spell that creates a creature with the sum HD of the combined creatures and the Aberration type, with abilities chosen a la Astral Construct, or something like that. Or you could do a spell that obliterates one of the creatures and, fluffwise, uses its flesh to alter the other creature, granting it things like tentacles, the Aberration type, an amorphous body, all-around vision, and general stat buffs. Alternatively, if you trust your players and/or DM, it could work well, but you have to be sure these aren't the sorts of people who ACTUALLY turn into 12-headed pyrohydras, and at that point it ventures beyond the scope of this forum and is entirely dependent on your group mechanics; handing out +10 longswords at level 1 can be balanced if you do it right, but it's not the sort of scenario we can offer useful advice on.

EDIT: I should be clear that the two suggestions I made above are still going to be fairly powerful spells, certainly so if you're basing them on the monster in question's Hit Dice rather than CR.

[Mythrignoc]

Oh don't worry, I agree with you about polymorph and fusion, they are broken. Basically I'm saying that I don't think it -needs- to be an epic spell because it can still be structured well enough to have it's limits.


In fact, the idea I'm having would probably be closer to something like a symbiotic creature from Savage Species in that I have a base creature, and fuse a secondary creature into it (not simply combine both as one perfect gestalt creature). This could mean extra arms like a Thri-kreen, a tougher hide for a beholder by combining it with an umber hulk's carapace or something.

This is why I suggested the astral construct column abilities, and I could base it off the type of creature I'm fusing into the base creature (an elemental column, a construct column, an abberation column, etc etc). I'm just wondering what sort of abilities would be appropriate and balanced for a 5th, 7th, and 9th level spell.